WHO WILL REBUILD UKRAINE?
The West should convert frozen Russian assets, both state's and oligarchs' owned, into a full seizure and set them aside for the future rebuilding of Ukraine. Like the Marshal Plan, call it the Putin Plan.
A HERO IS BORN.
I am staying put. I will not run away and abandon my people. The fight is here in Ukraine. What I need are weapons and ammunitions, not a ride out of town like former Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani - President Volodymyr Zelensky.
IT IS WHAT IT IS.
"There is too much hate in America because there is too much anger in America." - Trevor Noah.
WORD!
A life without challenges is not a life lived at all. A life lived is a life that has problems, confronts problems, solves problems and then learns from problems. - Tunde Fashola.
NOW, YOU KNOW.
When fishing for love, bait with your heart and not your brain, because you cannot rationalize love. - Mark Twain.
JUST THE FACT.
In our country, you can shoot and kill a nigger, but you better not hurt a gay person’s feelings - Dave Chappelle
DO YOU?.
“What you believe in can only be defined by what you’re willing to risk for it." - Stuart Scheller.
HEDGE YOUR CRISIS.
Never get in bed with a woman whose problems are worse than yours. - Chicago PD.
OUR SHARED HUMANITY.
Empathy is at the heart of who we are as human beings. - Cardinal Matthew Kukah.
#MeToo MOVEMENT: A BAD NEWS GONE CRAZY.
"To all the women who testified, we may have different truth, but I have a great remorse for all of you. I have great remorse for all of the men and women going through this crisis right now in our country. You know, the movement started basically with me, and I think what happened, you know, I was the first example, and now there are thousands of men who are being accused and a regeneration of things that I think none of us understood. I’m not going to say these aren’t great people. I had wonderful times with these people. I’m just genuinely confused. Men are confused about this issue. We are going through this #MeToo movement crisis right now in this country." - Harvey Weinstein.
RON DELLUMS: UNAPOLOGETICALLY RADICAL.

"If it’s radical to oppose the insanity and cruelty of the Vietnam War, if it’s radical to oppose racism and sexism and all other forms of oppression, if it’s radical to want to alleviate poverty, hunger, disease, homelessness, and other forms of human misery, then I’m proud to be called a radical.” - Ron Vernie Dellums.
Farida Waziri: Psychiatry and Nigeria's ruling class
ReplyDeleteby Is'haq Modibbo Kawu
So Nigerians have had an underlining suspicion that we might have been allowing madmen in the corridors of power; the difference being that they have not been walking naked in markets but have been extremely busy stealing our country blind!
Of course I am not disputing the sociology of corruption which led to madam’s conclusion; however, I believe that reducing the problem to the subjective issues of a compulsive disorder makes some faulty assumptions: one, that the neo-colonial order is a ‘normal’ form of society and that capitalism is the only way that society can be organized. On the two grounds, I disagree with Mrs. Waziri. In matters like this, the fault is not only in the individuals, but more fundamentally in the nature of society that produces them; it is nature and nurture combined!
The Nigerian ruling class chose capitalism as path to development. But Nigeria is really a neo-colonial country, with a specific role assigned to it, within the international capitalist division of labour. That role was to supply cash crops in the past and oil today while acting as market for goods from the advanced capitalist countries. In essence, the Nigerian ruling class is about one hundred years late in its lame effort to build a capitalist society. In that phase, there was the colonization of the Americas and the genocide of the Aborigine populations and the slave trade which Marx said turned Africa into a warren for the commercial exploitation of black peoples. So without this phase and the subsequently colonialism and neo-colonialism, which has continued to this day, the advanced capitalist countries would not have built the capitalist success which they tout as the only way society can be developed.
Unfortunately for Nigeria, the ruling class has no colonies to expropriate surplus from; there is no significant peasant production to steal neither is there a substantial working class to exploit. The resources of the state are therefore where they turn to for the “gluttonous accumulation of wealth” which Mrs. Waziri referred to. But the difference is that while the robbers in Europe and America invested their loot to develop their capitalist societies, and to earn respect, even began to set up foundations and endowments with their blood-soaked monies, in Nigeria our thieving rulers loot and take monies out of the country. They do not invest here; they don’t make their loot serve social ends. This is the only basis to accept the theses that they are simply mad! But do not be deceived, there is no way to have capitalism without its attendant concomitants of corruption, especially in a neo-colonial setting. The imperialists, who preach a “corruption-free capitalism” and other pseudo moralizing, know that the system is soaked in the blood of millions of exploited peoples around the world. Its continued hegemony is watered with more blood as we have seen in Iraq; in the theft of resources around the world and related corrupt acts. That is the nature of the capitalist system or how many times have we heard of bribes given by Western Transnational Corporations for contracts in Third World countries? Why did we have the Siemens and Halliburton scandals?
If Farida Waziri genuinely believes we must check the psychiatric state of members of our ruling class, it might be a popular move but she is still scratching the surface of the problem. Her suggestion has not gone down well with David Mark, an archetype of the ruling class in Nigeria! She has a long battle to fight because our rulers truly betray symptoms of obsessive psychiatric disorder, but it is a product of the unproductive and historically barren form of capitalism they have foisted on Nigeria. The choice created an ambience where corruption is the essence of governance and in turn it has made lunatics out of our thieving rulers! This is why Nigerian patriots must work for the liberation of our country: there is no hope on the path they have chosen for Nigeria.